Film release : Inshallah a Boy, by Amjad Al Rasheed

Jordanian filmmaker Amjad Al Rasheed was born on 12 June 1985. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Business Administration and a Master's degree in Film Arts from the Red Sea Institute of Cinematic Arts in Aqaba, Jordan. After receiving the award for best first short film in Amman in 2005, he joined the Talent Campus at the Berlin Film Festival two years later. In 2016, he was one of Screen International's five "Arab Stars of Tomorrow", which highlights emerging talents from the region. Inshallah a Boy is his first feature film. 

In contemporary Jordan, a thirty-year-old woman fights to preserve the inheritance of her only daughter after her husband's death. In a hostile context, she has to struggle to keep her apartment, as well as the guardianship of her daughter, in a society that favours male heirs. When legal precedent obliges her to share her assets with her brother-in-law and she is refused a bank loan, she is driven to deception, pretending that she is pregnant in order to suspend the judge's ruling.

Inspired by the real-life experiences of the director's relatives, the film delivers a social criticism of women's oppression in Jordan. Amjad Al Rasheed opts for transparent staging, avoiding sensationalism and any tendency for miserabilism. He advocates empowerment through a brave and dignified heroine, who decides to fight at all costs for her rights. Despite the character's dramatic situation, Inshallah a Boy is punctuated with comic interludes thanks to compelling protagonists, written with complexity and finesse. 

Presented in 2023 May at Critics Week, Inshallah a Boy is the first Jordanian film to be selected at the Cannes Film Festival. It was the recipient of the Gan Foundation Award for Distribution. With over fifty selections around the world, it has also received awards such as the Post Production Award at Ateliers de l'Atlas in Marrakesh, as well as the Rise Studios and The Cell awards at Cairo Film Connection. Released in France on 6 March, the film is supported by Aide aux cinémas du monde, jointly operated by the Institut français and the CNC to support feature film projects.